Category Archives: in the bubble

It’s finally, really, almost finished. Fire yesterday, water today. As of tonight, I can cook over an open flame, put stuff down the disposal, and use the dishwasher. No more Teflon-coated electric wok, no more washing dishes in the shower, right?

So I stopped at the store on the way home from a very long day at work to get beer so I could have my favorite supper: beer and popcorn. But not only could I not find any popcorn, I couldn’t find the popcorn popper either. Good thing there were two episodes of Glee on the DVR to console me.

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All that’s left is screwing in the pulls, finding some damn undercounter lights, and punch list things. Oh, yeah, and finding a table to fit the completely bizarre space for it.

There are mistakes, that’s for sure. But I really can’t believe how wonderful it is. The blue is perfect, and the main excuse for the whole thing — no counter space — is really, truly, much improved. Seems like there’s a place to put something down everywhere I turn.

That South Park kid who's all hopped up because his parents own a coffee shop, and who is the source of Jaffner's beloved Underpants Trolls ... I mean Gnomes? His name is Tweek Tweak -- now i get it!

Tweaking, tweeking: So Friday night I was driving a vanload of high school kids through the “Open ’til 1 am” McDonald’s drivethrough. As we pulled toward the speaker, we saw a zombie staggering ahead of us, quite purposefully staying in the drivethrough lines. Around the corner he stumbled, and we pulled up to give our order — only to have the girl interrupt us and ask us to wait. We figured the zombie must have been at the window, and she confirmed this when she came back to complete our order. He was dragging off as we pulled around to the window. Imagine our surprise, when he turned and headed back to the window, to see that he wasn’t actually undead, as he appeared from behind. Just a really drunk white guy

“Or maybe he’s tweeking,” said the boy in the shotgun seat. Wait! what’s that mean? I insisted, and after some frantic hushing, I understood it to mean “in a state of having used marijuana.” An adjective, not a verb, as one would expect from the form? Yes, they confirmed, equivalent to the archaic, stone-age “stoned.”

Urban Dictionary, however, calls it all about meth, which makes more sense. Let’s hope this means our boys really don’t know nuthin bout no drug use yet.

Trolling: When I was a kid, this would have referred to what the SC State Patrolman was doing under that highway overpass, lying in wait for my dad to speed by. My mother said they lived under bridges, like the troll in the Three Billygoats Gruff. ‘trolman, get it?

In college, this would have been what our friend Bruce was doing in bars, trolling for some … dates, I suppose.

But my kids beg to differ. Trolling is what the GYSO boys say to me in the minivan that makes me not believe a word out of their mouths. They’ve burned me so many times I’ve quit responding at all. It’s when Tom and his pals set their not-so-smart classmates up for a fall. A prank, generally a verbal one, The Littles say. So definition 2 here at Urban Dictionary.

At one point some in a discussion about the word this weekend, a carload of kids refused to believe that trolls sing (I can’t remember how we got there), despite my insistence that they do so in The Hobbit. Here’s proof!

Zippers and crookneck squash with deelish Vidalia onions from Jaemor Farms. Pierce's tomatoes. And OK, the rice is leftover from Mirage, but maybe it's a southern Iran kind of rice. That is one pretty plate.